WikiIndaba conference 2018/Report/Marc Miquel

Event Name

WikiIndaba Conference 2018

My Input

My main input was in the Research showcase with the presentation Fostering the representation of African cultures in Wikipedia language editions with Wikipedia Cultural Diversity Observatory (WCDO) (pdf). I was able to connect with a particular group of people that felt very interested in how to explain their background and use WCDO. I was surprised by how much the Tunisian love their heritage! Interesting.

Most importantly, I communicated the results on African languages to their speakers. Cultural Context Content extent in these languages is smaller than the average Cultural Context Content in all language editions, which implies there is a huge opportunity, because African people are not dedicating enough efforts to cover their cultures when they are the ones who can do it best (they have direct access to sources).

The session, along with other meetings, were extremely useful in order to get project supporters as well as testers for the results evaluation.

Participant Connections

I already knew some people, but I was able to meet again with Nicole Ebber, Anass Sedrati and Reem Al-Kashif. I had the chance to meet for the first time Erina Mukuta, Douglas Scott, Ana Brandusescu, Med Bachounda and, Felix Nartey. Some of them had supported the project and I had the chance to thank them offline, which is always great. The goal was to strengthen both a network of collaborators, disseminate and test the results at the same time. I could make a longer list of people, but these are simply the first that come to my mind with no particular order.

Outcomes

Met Dumisane, who was enthusiast with creating a list of 100 articles for every language related culture.
Met Benoît Prieur, who helped me use some basic operations using pywikibot and integrate to my scripts.
Fixed some lines from the database I am generating between Languages and Territories.
Learnt from WikiChallenge and see what could be imported to WCDO.
Participated on strategy and other sessions.
Breath the fresh air of Africa's northest point, Cape Angela! :)

The Wikiindaba was very well organized. I think that it was effective for networking and sharing experiences. Thank you, Tunisia Team!